Waewick wrote:at sounds like a difficult thing to do with no understanding at all of what it involves.

In the 1920's, steam locos towing dozens of regional and interstate trains managed to pull in to Adelaide station daily, cars were shunted in to place, and the locos turned around using a manual turn table. In Melbourne today many more multitudes of regional and interstate trains use Southern Cross, side by side with metro trains on adjacent platforms. This argument of recent years that operationally it is too difficult to get interstate trains into Adelaide station in the new millennium really is a pisstake. Parklands station is a horrible place to arrive.

Waewick wrote:at sounds like a difficult thing to do with no understanding at all of what it involves.

In the 1920's, steam locos towing dozens of regional and interstate trains managed to pull in to Adelaide station daily, cars were shunted in to place, and the locos turned around using a manual turn table. In Melbourne today many more multitudes of regional and interstate trains use Southern Cross, side by side with metro trains on adjacent platforms. This argument of recent years that operationally it is too difficult to get interstate trains into Adelaide station in the new millennium really is a pisstake. Parklands station is a horrible place to arrive.

I wasn't suggesting it wasn't possible

I really like the idea, but I just don't know how they would physically do it (as outside Thomas the Tank Engine I don't know much about trains)

Waewick wrote:at sounds like a difficult thing to do with no understanding at all of what it involves.

In the 1920's, steam locos towing dozens of regional and interstate trains managed to pull in to Adelaide station daily, cars were shunted in to place, and the locos turned around using a manual turn table. In Melbourne today many more multitudes of regional and interstate trains use Southern Cross, side by side with metro trains on adjacent platforms. This argument of recent years that operationally it is too difficult to get interstate trains into Adelaide station in the new millennium really is a pisstake. Parklands station is a horrible place to arrive.

With the new hospital and new university buildings going up, they should take the opportunity to extend the covered station platforms further west, and add more platforms if possible even if it's just for suburban trains.
Is interstate train travel even that well used?

Waewick wrote:at sounds like a difficult thing to do with no understanding at all of what it involves.

In the 1920's, steam locos towing dozens of regional and interstate trains managed to pull in to Adelaide station daily, cars were shunted in to place, and the locos turned around using a manual turn table. In Melbourne today many more multitudes of regional and interstate trains use Southern Cross, side by side with metro trains on adjacent platforms. This argument of recent years that operationally it is too difficult to get interstate trains into Adelaide station in the new millennium really is a pisstake. Parklands station is a horrible place to arrive.

With the new hospital and new university buildings going up, they should take the opportunity to extend the covered station platforms further west, and add more platforms if possible even if it's just for suburban trains.
Is interstate train travel even that well used?

They should take the opportunity of the festival theater redevelopment and dig out the earth below it to make room for the underground loop

GoodSmackUp wrote:They should take the opportunity of the festival theater redevelopment and dig out the earth below it to make room for the underground loop

Provision for the underground loop has been made between the new Adelaide Uni and UniSA medical buildings on North Tce.

Furthermore, the underground loop tunnels will go directly below North Terrace. Access from the Railway Station would be from the underground walkway between Station Arcade and the railway station concourse.

Any views and opinions expressed are of my own, and do not reflect the views or opinions of any organisation of which I have an affiliation with.

Certainly new track and infrastructure required to make this possible - the current interstate trains don't even run on the same gauge tracks as those that bring the suburban trains in to Adelaide station, and the platforms are not even close to long enough to support the length of some of the Ghan and Indian Pacific services.

There's honest no point unless passenger numbers pick up for all three interstate/cross country services, and this will only happen if high speed rail is linked between Adelaide and Melbourne, and the cost of the Ghan and India Pacific is dropped. If they could do these things and significantly improve the numbers, it could almost be justified that they build a second city train station to cater for this, potential intrastate rail services (that could be reintroduced if there were enough of a demand) and inter/intrastate bus travel.

Patrick_27 wrote:There's honest no point unless passenger numbers pick up for all three interstate/cross country services, and this will only happen if high speed rail is linked between Adelaide and Melbourne, and the cost of the Ghan and India Pacific is dropped. If they could do these things and significantly improve the numbers, it could almost be justified that they build a second city train station to cater for this, potential intrastate rail services (that could be reintroduced if there were enough of a demand) and inter/intrastate bus travel.

Well they can't justify a high speed train if there is no interstate passenger rail to begin with, and that starts with smaller scale investments like moving the terminal to Adelaide. It also conveniently uses the same gauge as XPT trains of NSW so there's some commonality there

You can be assured of on thing, the return of interstate rail to the Adelaide Railway Station will commence the knock-on effect of the standardisation of our rail network, starting with the Belair Line.

mattwinter wrote:It's a bit of chicken v egg... Bringing SG trains to ARS would boost numbers a but I think, but the numbers aren't really worth the cost at the moment...

One key question is whether regional rail is ever a serious possibility. If it is then SG to ARS is a must. Would like to see the UG loop made a priority and bring in SG at the same time.

Does anyone know the numbers of Buses on country roads on football days? I know there are buses from Barossa, Murray Bridge, Riverland, Spencer Gulf towns, Yorke Peninsula....I know the state is broke, and regional rail is WAY down on the list of things to do, but to get all those buses off the country roads for major AO events would have a knock on effect for more regular services. This would make our country centres more attractive to live in, and the roads in the mid north are rubbish to drive/ride on. It would even create more employment in regional and near city regions. Country Victoria is a very different place in the last 10 years since the introduction of high (relatively) speed more modern train.

Patrick_27 wrote:You can be assured of on thing, the return of interstate rail to the Adelaide Railway Station will commence the knock-on effect of the standardisation of our rail network, starting with the Belair Line.

would that include all of the lines we just relaied for the electrification works?